blind side parallel parking....HELP

I just passed my cdl test and had to do left to right parallel park. Here is how I did it.

Lined my truck up 2 feet away from the cone and 6 feet in front of the cone(rear bumper).

Turn the wheel half way to the left and back up till the right rear of your trailer just touches the middle cone in the back in your mirror.

stop, then turn the wheel all the right till the trailer and tractor are in a straight line, then straight line back till your left rear tires are even with the out most cone.

stop, then turn the wheel 2 turns to the right until your rear tractor tire splits the landing gear on your trailer in the mirror.

turn the wheel all the way left and follow the trailer in, if you set up right, it should put you dead in the middle of the cones.

hope that wasn't confusing for ya, that is how I was taught and it worked well.

 

Treat it just like backing into the last door on the dock and imagine a wall on the far side..... a far more likely situation than "parallel parking" on a city street. In 37 yeats I've only "parallel parked" maybe a dozen times (usually Boston or Old Montreal), but have backed into hundreds of awkward docks.

So, when I had to do it (amongst other things) on my "retest" after moving down here I went into "dock mode" and hit it first shot. Several of the other "testees" that were waiting their turn had a small cow.

You'll do fine once you get done with the "testing jitters".

 

I say "God, I am no good at this, so I am asking you to do it for me, Please guide my hands as I attempt this....." Worked for me many times. People now think that I am good at backing up..... Lol, if they only knew!

 

Don't be afraid to use your pull ups and your "get out and looks". You have two free ones of each on that maneuver. If you see it is going wrong, go ahead and pull up and correct your position. And make sure you pull up enough to fix the problem - a pull up is a pull up for scoring - it doesn't matter if you pull up 4 feet or 40 feet.

And if you need more pull ups to get it done, go ahead and take them. Each additional pull up is one point, whereas hitting a cone or going outside the box is two points. So if you are about to go out, it's cheaper to take one point, pull up and fix it.

 

Hard for him to do that, since he's a student and hasn't yet been in any "tricky dock" situations.


When I took the test in Illinois in 2004, there was nothing about parallel parking. It wasn't taught in the CDL school and wasn't part of the test with the state examiner.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but I taught myself how to parallel park. I'm not perfect at it. If I said I was perfect at it, I'd have 5 people calling me a "super trucker" and I'd end up jinxing myself and next time I try it I'll hit something or it'll take me 40 minutes.

But I can eventually get it parked perfectly how I want it. The problem is I'm always afraid to back up too far, in fear of bashing up the front of the truck I'm parking in front of. That's when you G.O.A.L.

I've parallel parked lots of times. A lot of Iowa rest areas require parallel parking, or when you arrive at a receiver that won't let you in the gates early, but there's this wide street you can park on, .. sometimes you gotta parallel park.

 

Do you know anyone currently employed as a truck driver who will let you practice? Like in the middle of the daytime in the nearly empty back row of a large truck stop, ... save a bunch of empty plastic water bottles, spray-paint them orange and fill em with tap water and set them out as cones?

 

The last time I parallel parked was at the rest stop on US287 south between Quanah and Chillicothe, TX. It was 2AM and the area was packed. I parked near the dumpsters adjacent to the playground.

 

As far as the test, my school had a special mark on the trailer that when it lined up with the side of the cab in your mirror, it was time to turn the wheels the other way and slide into the hole. In TX you had to get at least 70% in the "box".